jennex's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dark Void]

The structure and melody fit the intention, but the sound design is an awful mismatch. I would expect a piece with this intention to have a more dark and foreboding sound design; to use sounds more subdued and creepy. As it stands the sounds in this piece strike me as what I might find in an electronic dance music piece instead of something meant to be chilling and dark.

Your sequencers are good. Now go back to your knobs and find some better sounds. I can't decide if I'm supposed to be chilled or if you want me to dance.

TheDoomrider responds:

No matter what situation you make music for it should have a groove and or melody, and not be the annoying basic atmospheres that plague the video game industry today.

[Jungle Journey]

Deliveres what it promises.

Well done, the piece accomplishes what it sets out to do, which to me is 99 percent of the 'the battle'. My criticisms, which are not truly serious but just for the sake of giving some any constructive feedback; I think some of the background sounds are mixed a bit too low, I would have mixed it a bit more evenly. The blown-sounding synth track sounds like it has too much reverb on it, the delay on it is perfect! the reverb sounds a little high. If I wanted to pick out one thing in particular to praise, it would be the sound design. The sound texture goes a long way towards the piece's merits.

Decibel7 responds:

First of all, thanks for the feedback! People usually vote and then leave and sometimes I wonder why they voted so poorly. I thrive off of criticism here.

I made some things low as to not distract from the focus (the flute-like sounds) because I wanted this to be useable in a clip or a game for instance. If the quietness affects the mix poorly, I should probably adjust that!

I did add a lot of reverb. A bit more than I usually do. I should also find the time to fix that.

Thanks!

[Not just Eternity, but Infinit]

Good start! needs work.

To get over that thought that you are streaching the piece beyond what it should be, you should try jumping keys, more general variety. I think the piece could have used a little better bridges between its sections as well.

That said, the sound design works very well. The synth sounds and effects work together well to create a pleasing sound, the progression and melody are also pleasing and catchy. The beat is good, but.. and this is just an opinion rather then a criticism.. I think it would sound better with more electronic-sounding drum sounds instead of the acoustic drum samples you are using.

Overall good piece though, keep working!

dynamism responds:

I gave more synthetic sounding drums a shot. You are pretty right about that, they match better. but a lot of times they replace some drum effect i want with weird little claps and bizarre sounds like that, and that is tedious to work around. but I will probably use them in my next song, thanks for the suggestion.

[ga-finkay]

Cool :)

Weird! Original! I like stuff like that. Keep doing your thing!

[Candy Bars]

Re: Track.

The main melody is good, the harmonic structure I think could stand to go a few more places then it does. There are a few points where certain harmonic changes seem so obvious to me I really expect them to happen and they don't, that's not necessarily bad! But I think it means the track had places it could have potentially explored and did not.

The drums are mixed way too high as well, and they really distract from what is a good melodic progression. I don't think this track deserves the abysmal score I see it getting, but I have a feeling the drum issue is the reason why it is getting voted low.

Sawdust responds:

Probably because it's so simple. I should add a bassline and more elements.

[Victory (8-bit tune)]

Pretty Nice!

Very nice! I like it. Musically the tune certainly sounds like it fits the Nintendo music theme. In that regard it more then accomplishes what it set out to do!

I'm not entirely sure what 8-bit music means. I have a pretty good idea that it means Nintendo music and they call it 8-bit for copyright issues? Ha, I honestly don't know, so I could be way off with this next part.

For this to be purist NES music I think your channels are off. The NES had only 3 melodic channels! Two pulse wave channels which had changeable but preset duty cycles, and one triangle channel with limited range. Then it also had a noise channel for drums and a DPCM sampler channel.

I hear too many oscillators in your tune for me to pick them all out! Remember the NES had 3 melodic oscillators total, only one oscillator per channel, and could play a max of 3 notes at a time, one on each channel, that's all!

Also the guys who made that music wrote it out in a programming language, kind of gives you a certain respect for those guys who made nintendo music back in the day, huh?

Pushbar responds:

haha 8-bit isn't a trademark of Nintendo. But yeah i know it's not real 8-bit because it has saw waves in there. The Nes was built with 5 audio channels, however some games had an expansion chip that allowed an extra two melodic channels.
There were many 8-bit consoles that had different sound capabilities.

anyway, thanks for the review!

[12 PM]

Nice!

I liked this a lot! It has a very original quality and I really dig that. The sounds don't sound like they just come straight out of presets, and the song structure defies simple classification into a definite electronica sub-genre.

I honestly really have no useful criticism. I think some might say the harmonic structure is a bit simple, and it kind of is, but I don't consider this a bad thing at all. It works exactly as it should for the piece. The melody that begins around a minute in is very nice in particular.

Overall, its just a very nice piece of work!

d00dfayz responds:

Thank you for your review.

[Science and Chemistry]

Makes me think of cyberpunk.

The combination of the FM synth sounding "sparkly" patch and the strong subtractive synth sounding saw patch, is really nice. Really the sound design overall is quite excellent! The piece's texture certainly invokes particular mental images which is I have always thought is the ultimate goal of any good music. Nice Work!

[Beautiful Husk]

Excellent!

Varied. Unpredictable! Strong consonance harmonies where they are needed, and wonderful discordant dissonance right where it should be in order to keep the piece interesting. Constructed sounds that are original and don't sound like presets mixed with convincing sampled instruments, not an easy task!

The varied pieces from each participant are mixed in a way that gives it a seamless quality while still maintaining an interesting and unpredictable changing quality.

Really quite excellent!

InvisibleObserver responds:

Thanks a ton for the thought out praise. A solid construction, though not representative of my style. :(